Ethereum was proposed in late 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, a cryptocurrency researcher and programmer. Development was funded by an online crowdsale that took place between July and August 2014.[4] The system then went live on 30 July 2015, with 72 million coins "premined". This accounts for about 68 percent of the total circulating supply in 2019. [5]

Mining is a record-keeping service done through the use of computer processing power.[e] Miners keep the blockchain consistent, complete, and unalterable by repeatedly grouping newly broadcast transactions into a block, which is then broadcast to the network and verified by recipient nodes.[75] Each block contains a SHA-256 cryptographic hash of the previous block,[75] thus linking it to the previous block and giving the blockchain its name.[7]:ch. 7[75] Ethereum's blockchain uses Merkle trees, for security reasons, to improve scalability, and to optimize transaction hashing.[61] As with any Merkle tree implementation, it allows for storage savings, set membership proofs (called "Merkle proofs"), and light client synchronization. The Ethereum network has at times faced congestion problems, for example, congestion occurred during late 2017 in relation to Cryptokitties.[62] Izabella Kaminska, the editor of FT Alphaville, has pointed out that criminals are using Ethereum to run Ponzi schemes and other forms of investment fraud.[67] The article was based on a paper from the University of Cagliari, which placed the number of Ethereum smart contracts which facilitate Ponzi schemes at nearly 10% of 1384 smart contracts examined. However, it also estimated that only 0.05% of the transactions on the network were related to such contracts.[68] ^ Chan, Edwin. "China Plans to Ban Cryptocurrency Mining in Renewed Clampdown". www.bloomberg.com. Retrieved 10 April 2019. While China was once home to about 70 percent of Bitcoin mining and 90 percent of trades, authorities have waged a nearly two-year campaign to shrink the crypto industry amid concerns over speculative bubbles, fraud and wasteful energy consumption.
Ethereum can also be used to build Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO). A DAO is fully autonomous, decentralized organization with no single leader. DAO’s are run by programming code, on a collection of smart contracts written on the Ethereum blockchain. The code is designed to replace the rules and structure of a traditional organization, eliminating the need for people and centralized control. A DAO is owned by everyone who purchases tokens, but instead of each token equating to equity shares & ownership, tokens act as contributions that give people voting rights. • إستثمار البيتكوين يُعتبر مُقامرة: طبقاُ إلى رأى أستاذ الفقه د/جلوى الجميعة أن البيتكوين ما هى إلا عُملات يتم إستخدامها للمقامرة. حيث أن عملة البيتكوين هى عملة إفتراضية إلكترونية ليس لها أى سند أو غطاء من الذهب أو الفضة وبالتالى هى في حُكم الدين تُعتبر سلعة مجهولة المصدر. وبالتالى تتيح حدوث الكثير من عمليات النصب والإحتيال نتيجة لعدم وجود أى جهات رقابية تراقب سير عملية التداول والإستثمار الخاصة بالعملات. كما نهى الرسول تماماً عن مثل هذا النوع من الإستثمار عندما قال ” صلى الله عليه وسلم عن شراء ما في بطون الانعام حتى تضع، وعما في ضروعها إلا بكيل أو وزن، ونهى عن شراء العبد وهو آبق، وعن شراء المغانم حتى تقسم، وعن شراء الصدقات حتى تقبض، وعن ضربة الغائص”. ^ Jump up to: a b c d "Statement of Jennifer Shasky Calvery, Director Financial Crimes Enforcement Network United States Department of the Treasury Before the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on National Security and International Trade and Finance Subcommittee on Economic Policy" (PDF). fincen.gov. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. 19 November 2013. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2016. Retrieved 1 June 2014. According to The New York Times, libertarians and anarchists were attracted to the idea. Early bitcoin supporter Roger Ver said: "At first, almost everyone who got involved did so for philosophical reasons. We saw bitcoin as a great idea, as a way to separate money from the state."[126] The Economist describes bitcoin as "a techno-anarchist project to create an online version of cash, a way for people to transact without the possibility of interference from malicious governments or banks".[129] • غطاء تمويلى للمنظمات الإرهابية: قامت دار الإفتاء المصرية بتصريح أن عمليات الإستثمار والتداول في البيتكوين تُعتبر عمليات مُحرمة من قبل الدين والشرع حيث إنها تعمل كغطاء لتمويل المنظمات الإرهابية وعصابات المُخدرات. كما لعدم وجود هيئات حكومية وبنوك مركزية كان لذلك آثر رهيب على استخدام إستثمارات البيتكوين في عمليات غسيل الأموال والتى بالطبع نهانا الرسول عنها، بل ويُحاسب عليها القانون أيضاً. Bitcoin (BTC) is known as the first open-source, peer-to-peer, digital cryptocurrency that was developed and released by a group of unknown independent programmers named Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. Cryptocoin doesn’t have any centralized server used for its issuing, transactions and storing, as it uses a distributed network public database technology named blockchain, which requires an electronic signature and is supported by a proof-of-work protocol to provide the security and legitimacy of money transactions. The issuing of Bitcoin is done by users with mining capabilities and is limited to 21 million coins. Currently, Bitcoin’s market cap surpasses $138 billion and this is the most popular kind of digital currency. Buying and selling cryptocurrency is available through special Bitcoin exchange platforms or ATMs. Various journalists,[205][210] economists,[211][212] and the central bank of Estonia[213] have voiced concerns that bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme. In April 2013, Eric Posner, a law professor at the University of Chicago, stated that "a real Ponzi scheme takes fraud; bitcoin, by contrast, seems more like a collective delusion."[214] A July 2014 report by the World Bank concluded that bitcoin was not a deliberate Ponzi scheme.[215]:7 In June 2014, the Swiss Federal Council[216]:21 examined the concerns that bitcoin might be a pyramid scheme; it concluded that, "Since in the case of bitcoin the typical promises of profits are lacking, it cannot be assumed that bitcoin is a pyramid scheme." In July 2017, billionaire Howard Marks referred to bitcoin as a pyramid scheme.[217]

In Ethereum all smart contracts are stored publicly on every node of the blockchain, which has costs.[57] Being a blockchain means it is secure by design and is an example of a distributed computing system with high Byzantine fault tolerance. The downside is that performance issues arise in that every node is calculating all the smart contracts in real time, resulting in lower speeds.[57] As of January 2016, the Ethereum protocol could process about 25 transactions per second.[57] In comparison, the Visa payment platform processes 45,000 payments per second leading some to question the scalability of Ethereum.[58] On 19 December 2016, Ethereum exceeded one million transactions in a single day for the first time.[59]

According to The New York Times, libertarians and anarchists were attracted to the idea. Early bitcoin supporter Roger Ver said: "At first, almost everyone who got involved did so for philosophical reasons. We saw bitcoin as a great idea, as a way to separate money from the state."[126] The Economist describes bitcoin as "a techno-anarchist project to create an online version of cash, a way for people to transact without the possibility of interference from malicious governments or banks".[129] The use of bitcoin by criminals has attracted the attention of financial regulators, legislative bodies, law enforcement, and the media.[218] In the United States, the FBI prepared an intelligence assessment,[219] the SEC issued a pointed warning about investment schemes using virtual currencies,[218] and the U.S. Senate held a hearing on virtual currencies in November 2013.[220] The U.S. government claimed that bitcoin was used to facilitate payments related to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.[221]

Bitcoin is a digital currency, sometimes referred to as a cryptocurrency, best known as the world's first truly decentralized digital currency. Bitcoin is traded on a peer-to-peer basis with a distributed ledger called the Blockchain, and the Bitcoin exchange rate to the US Dollar and other major currencies is determined by supply and demand as with other global exchange rates. The traded value of Bitcoin has proven volatile through various booms and busts in demand. Ultimately, however, many see Bitcoin as a store of value against government-backed fiat currencies.

Ethereum was initially described in a white paper by Vitalik Buterin,[10] a programmer involved with Bitcoin Magazine, in late 2013 with a goal of building decentralized applications.[11][12] Buterin had argued that Bitcoin needed a scripting language for application development. Failing to gain agreement, he proposed development of a new platform with a more general scripting language.[4]:88
Ethereum is the pioneer for blockchain based smart contracts. When running on the blockchain a smart contract becomes like a self-operating computer program that automatically executes when specific conditions are met. On the blockchain, smart contracts allow for code to be run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third-party interference. It can facilitate the exchange of money, content, property, shares, or anything of value. The Ethereum network went live on July 30th, 2015 with 72 million Ethereum premined. Ethereum enables developers to build and deploy decentralized applications. A decentralized application or Dapp serve some particular purpose to its users. Bitcoin, for example, is a Dapp that provides its users with a peer to peer electronic cash system that enables online Bitcoin payments. Because decentralized applications are made up of code that runs on a blockchain network, they are not controlled by any individual or central entity. Ethereum addresses are composed of the prefix "0x", a common identifier for hexadecimal, concatenated with the rightmost 20 bytes of the Keccak-256 hash (big endian) of the ECDSA public key (the curve used is the so called secp256k1, the same as Bitcoin). In hexadecimal, 2 digits represents a byte, meaning addresses contain 40 hexadecimal digits. An example of an Ethereum address is 0xb794F5eA0ba39494cE839613fffBA74279579268. Contract addresses are in the same format, however they are determined by sender and creation transaction nonce.[34] User accounts are indistinguishable from contract accounts given only an address for each and no blockchain data. Any valid Keccak-256 hash put into the described format is valid, even if it does not correspond to an account with a private key or a contract. This is unlike Bitcoin, which uses base58check to ensure that addresses are properly typed.
Transactions are defined using a Forth-like scripting language.[7]:ch. 5 Transactions consist of one or more inputs and one or more outputs. When a user sends bitcoins, the user designates each address and the amount of bitcoin being sent to that address in an output. To prevent double spending, each input must refer to a previous unspent output in the blockchain.[77] The use of multiple inputs corresponds to the use of multiple coins in a cash transaction. Since transactions can have multiple outputs, users can send bitcoins to multiple recipients in one transaction. As in a cash transaction, the sum of inputs (coins used to pay) can exceed the intended sum of payments. In such a case, an additional output is used, returning the change back to the payer.[77] Any input satoshis not accounted for in the transaction outputs become the transaction fee.[77]
According to the European Central Bank, the decentralization of money offered by bitcoin has its theoretical roots in the Austrian school of economics, especially with Friedrich von Hayek in his book Denationalisation of Money: The Argument Refined,[127] in which Hayek advocates a complete free market in the production, distribution and management of money to end the monopoly of central banks.[128]:22